Bravery
by ChekhovTheTroper
Summary: What happens when our blue-haired heroine's journey back to the Other World takes an unexpected detour and she crosses paths with a six-year-old boy bent on vanquishing Darkness? *Based on the artwork by FilmmakerJ*


**DISCLAIMER: I do not own ****_Coraline_****, nor do I own the ****_Pajama Sam _****game series…but I own a jar of buttons and an Illuminator Mark III. Close enough? No? :(**

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"She's got a _thing _for games."

"A thing for games, huh?" Coraline asks, crawling through the decrepit corridor. The candlelight quivers for a moment, and then stills, giving off stagnant warmth.

The cat nods, purring haughtily. Coraline's lips knit together as she contemplates her attack when facing the Other Mother. What did her father call it? Her _modus operandi_, or perhaps her _modus vivendi_, _oppressi liberandi_…so many Latin mottos hummed from the television set and the periodic dinnertime muttering. It sounded boring to Coraline at the time, and ironically, it still does; but it somehow makes sense.

"If you're going to challenge her," the cat sneers, "I suggest you keep your heart out of your mouth."

"You're not scared?"

"I guess not. I guess I have nothing to lose."

"Well, I do." Coraline says, her eyes drilling through the affluent clutter. Broken clocks (but somehow still ticking); an empty rocking chair; toys and clothes adorned with deadened cobwebs. At this point, Coraline is listing every dispensable detail, every trivial memory she discarded. To her, each one could be the last thing she remembers. She is going _back_, back to where the problem started. What if she fails? Coraline shivers at the thought of those polished buttons, the last thing she could see before…

_If I fail, will they miss me?_

The question that she should've asked: _If I fail, will I miss them?_

Coraline is aware of the question's presence in her mind. The cat reciprocates, and yawns apathetically.

It takes Coraline a few heartbeats to realize that the corridor is growing—no, _breathing_. Each provoked movement causes the crawlspace to expand. The clocks disassemble themselves with a few intervals of loud _tocks. _The rocking chair shifts once, twice, and stops before decaying like pictures set ablaze. The toys stand up and sigh while the clothes writhe in the newfound space; each cluster of cobweb augments, enveloping the aforementioned accessories until they vanish altogether. Coraline pretends to not acknowledge this, but when her knees are starting to ache and the fire winks before dwindling into a burnt wick, she teeters as she stands up too quickly. The cat mews, stretching and coddling Coraline's feet.

Coraline apprehensively holds her bag to her chest. "Are we here…already?"

The cat does not reply.

"Can you still be able to talk?"

The cat still does not reply. Something thunders in the distance, to which the cat pivots from it. Then, a whirlwind of purples and greens flashes above their heads; no glint is evident, but a bleary omnipresence haunts Coraline—

Until someone falls from the sky and lands on the ground, the impact punctuated by the cat's frightened yowl. Coraline flinches back, as well, ready to fight tooth and nail with whatever robot the Other Mother constructed. However, she tilts her head inquisitively, seeing that this person is not a dangerous creature, but only a six-year-old boy.

Initially, Coraline reaches out, but the boy backs away, clutching a small, silver flashlight. He points it at her, clicking the light on and off. Throughout his hysterical tirade, he does not look her in the eye. "Get back, Darkness! Get back before I vanquish you!"

Although she couldn't see the ironic humor in his situation, Coraline smirks. "Well, last time I checked, I'm an eleven-year-old girl who lived in Pontiac and whose parents were kidnapped. I don't know who this Darkness guy is."

The little boy looks up, blinking bemusedly at her. His eyes hold no fear, but the tremors in his voice say otherwise. "Am I…am I still in my closet?"

"I'm afraid not," Coraline says, smiling. "I'm guessing you're not another ghost; you've still got your eyes."

"Huh?"

"Never mind. I really should get going, though. I need to try and find the…door?"

Coraline walks forward, waiting for a bright light to puncture the ersatz nighttime. The closest thing she finds is the intermittent, metallic flicker that comes from the little boy's flashlight. The cat rolls its eyes at him and walks elsewhere.

"What's with the flashlight?" Coraline asks, unsure if she should be annoyed or amused.

"It's the Illuminator Mark V Jr. It takes two D batteries, y'know."

"Wow. And I'm guessing your lunchbox is some magical Darkness-vanquishing vacuum."

"Exactly!" the boy chirps. "It's my Signature-Edition, All-Metal Pajama Man lunchbox! I can keep Darkness in here once I defeat him."

"Heh. That's new."

"You're really smart. Have you vanquished Darkness before?"

"No…but I'm about to." Coraline reaches her hand out. "I'm Coraline. Coraline Jones. What's your name?"

The little boy sets down his flashlight and shakes her hand, almost too enthusiastically. "I'm Pajama Sam! What are you doing here?"

Coraline withdraws her hand, a wistful loll blatant in her tone of voice. "Well…I don't know if it's Darkness that I'm afraid of, but a button-eyed beldam sounds scary to me."

"What's a beldam?"

"It's sort of like a monster. Someone that likes to hurt people. She's hurt my parents."

"Oh, no." Sam touches her hand again. "I'm sorry to hear about that."

"Oh. It's OK." It really isn't, but Coraline is smart enough to feign cheeriness in the presence of children. "I know what I'm doing this time. For me. For the ghost kids—"

"What ghost kids?"

Coraline flexes her hands for a moment, and replies, "These kids, I don't know how old they are, but the kids—they had parents that made them unhappy. So she was their Other Mother…some Mother. She was magical. She gave them everything they wanted, but she wanted them to stay forever. So, she sewed buttons, into their—their _eyes_, and they were trapped. They were trapped and…and _eaten_, too. Their eyes are still here, and I've got to find them, as well as my parents."

She thinks that she's told her story concisely, but as she searches through her bag once more, she realizes that she is close to tears. She swipes at her eyes, sighing with relief when she does not see any contraband droplets on her fingertips; but recalling the story presses down on her mind, and she covers her mouth, trying to quell an impending series of sobs.

"Then maybe Darkness is a beldam." Pajama Sam hugs his lunchbox to his chest, sitting down as he turns the flashlight off. Coraline calms herself and glances around a second time, trying to see if the door has opened or if the cat has disappeared again. She knows the answer to the second question, but the first one puzzles her. Before she prepares to leave, she looks down at Pajama Sam. The inkling of fear found in his voice has traveled up to his eyes, and this time, it appears stronger than before, even in such dark emptiness.

Coraline kneels down to the ground, ignoring the pangs that burrow in her kneecaps. She reaches for Sam's flashlight and presses the button, setting it upwards in front of them. The sudden brightness catches her off-guard, but the dizziness fades and as her eyes adjust to the change, she turns to Sam, who is still hugging his lunchbox and staring at his feet.

"How is Darkness like a beldam?"

Sam looks at her, absorbing Coraline's question more than the concerned voice that asked it. "He…he scares me too much."

"How?"

"I don't know. He just does. Pajama Man fought Darkness before and he always beat him. But I'm…" Sam disregards the last sentence and continues. "Darkness has always lived in my closet. I don't know how to capture him if I'm not…if I'm not—"

"Brave enough?"

Sam looks at her, trying to find the right reaction, but instead nods, trying to imagine the queasy visual of Darkness looming over him, grinning, chuckling with ugly charm. He shivers, recoiling when Coraline scoots closer to him.

"Y'know," Coraline whispers, patting his shoulder, "this reminds me of the time I went to the wastelands with my father."

Sam looks at her with quizzical, but petrified eyes. "H-how?"

"Well…when I was about your age, my dad liked to take me on walks, so that I can explore. One day, we explored the wastelands near our old house, even though it was dangerous. There was mostly broken glass and trash everywhere, but when I wasn't looking, Dad told me to run as fast as I could away from him. I didn't understand, but I did as he said. I ran, and he followed me eventually. I glanced back once and there was…there was a horde of wasps surrounding him. I guess we had stepped on a wasp's nest back there."

Sam nods, trying to process Coraline's cryptic reminiscing. Coraline smiles and presses forward, trying to remember how many wasp-stings were on her arm. There were…

"Two. I had one or two stings on my arm; Dad had forty. We counted while Mom was putting ointment on them. Afterwards, Dad had to go back to get his glasses because they fell off of his face while the wasps stung him. He came back and hugged me immediately. I told him he was really brave back there, but he pulled back and sat me down on my bed. He said that it wasn't brave of him to stand there and let the wasps sting him because he wasn't scared. All he cared about was making sure I was OK. However, he said that going back there when he _was _scared that the wasps would come back and sting him again—_that _was brave."

"So…so what you're saying is…" Sam stammers, tapping his fingers against metal. "I'm brave if I'm scared? That doesn't make a lot of sense."

Coraline laughs with plaintive content. "I guess not. I'm scared out of my mind right now, but I'm going back because my parents need me, as do the ghost children. Why are you going there?"

"Because…Darkness scares me, and he scares a lot of other kids. Someone has to stop him."

"Then that's a brave thing to do if you're shaking like a leaf." Coraline smirks, nudging his shoulder. He laughs in return, and as he does, she turns the light off. "I hope you don't waste all the battery-power. You'll be surrounded by then."

"Same here." Pajama Sam stands up and grabs his flashlight, but drops his lunchbox by accident. Coraline giggles and hands it to him, staggering to her feet. He smiles at her, gathers all of his stuff, and tucks them into the crook of his elbow. "I guess I need to go now. I hope you find your parents again."

"Thanks. I hope you sleep with the lights on more often. It was nice meeting you."

Coraline shakes his hand one more time and turns to leave, but before she does, he wraps his arms around her legs and pulls her into a hug. She pats his head and squeezes his shoulders once before he lets go. She walks away, comprehending Sam's smile. As she leaves, he seems to fade away like an apparition caught in human light, and the space closes in on her, forcing her to crawl again.

At the end of the tunnel, a small door opens.

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**A/N: Yes, I know I ripped that whole retrospective wasp-ologue out of the original ****_Coraline _****novel. I just felt that it fit the conversation really well. But yes, all credit for that goes to Neil Gaiman, b/c he can never stop writing about little girls that are somehow constantly faced w/ p̶e̶d̶o̶p̶h̶i̶l̶e̶s̶ monstrous creatures that want to harm their families.**

**Also, I'd like to give credit that is much-deserved: this detestable piece of fluff is based off of a crossover picture that deviantART user FilmmakerJ drew of Coraline and Pajama Sam meeting. His artwork is fantastic, and he has more pictures involving HE game characters. I suggest you go check him out!**

**(filmmakerj . deviantart)**

**So yes, I hope you've enjoyed my first K-rated fanfic. Leave a review telling me what you think; again, go check out FilmmakerJ's artwork, and I'm wishing all of y'all a fantastic evening :3**

**-Peace from the gun-troper**


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